Posted
by
CmdrTaco
on Tuesday September 06, 2005 @10:14AM
from the open-is-better-right dept.

slackah writes "OpenWengo an open source alternative to skype. It includes features such as sip calls, SMS, video conference, and automatic NAT configuration. It's still under heavy development, but it looks very promising."

They happen to be using Trac [edgewall.com] as a web-based wiki/issue tracker/project management tool, and they're using an old version.

Trac's development trunk has fixed some of these locking issues with SQLite as well as allowed for using Postgres as a backend. I'm still not sure if it would survive a slashdotting, but it would be better performance than this.

I don't think their dev server is any indication of the level of service...

Well minus the 500 error I can't tell much about this product. I just hope its extensible. VOIP is huge right now.

I am not sure how the traditional carriers can handle this competition, but what I have noticed is that outside of the non-metro areas it isn't catching on like I thought it would. Being originally from the midwest I still have to explain what voip is.

Try explaining why a street address is not as good as an IP address to a farmer.

The added value of skype is that they have a pretty good working voice protocol compared to others at this moment. The other part in added value is that they can connect to the normal voice networks globally. Just having an opensource chat program is not going to do you a lot of good in the second case.

myself and a few friends all have asterisk systems and broadvoice. if I want to call california my asterisk system sees that and routes the call to his asterisk system and then out his broadvoice connection. works great take no effort and does not mess up his use of his broadvoice line as broadvoice allows 4 voice channels to be open on one line. he can have 2 calls going on while I use one channel.

if you are a techie type of person screwing around with these desktop app based systems is a waste of time. use real SIP hardware and get in on the real fun.

nothing like your own conference bridge to have 12 frinds all yakking away in.

Depsite Google Talk's extreme lack of features (i.e. emoticons, no file transfers, no conversation logging), their Talk part is quite superior to Skype's. The voice quality is clearly higher and the bandwidth usage is similar to Skype's (both can be used over a 56k connection just fine). It seems Google put a lot of focus on the backend stuff, and they are currently writing up the spec for it to be released as an open protocol. Skype was significanlty better then prior generations, but Google's Talk is pro

The second claim is not true. I can call with my SIP softphone worldwide (to the "normal" network) at good rates and with good quality. And yes, it already works behind NAT/Firewall without configuring/open the router. And yes, its OSS (kphone), you just have to connect to a SIP provider, which is free as long i don't call outside the SIP network. Im not aware of a German SIP provider where you have to pay for that, dunno how this is handled in other countries.

IMO, the added value of skype is that everything is encrypted end-to-end, so I can talk to my buddy about smoking weed without worrying about big brother knocking at my door. I haven't read anything about this open source alternative offering end-to-end encryption.

PC-to-PC calls were available for ages... some software do this very well.But PC-to-Regular Land Lines and Cellular Phones at extremely competitive international/long-distance rates (at least where I live) is the *real* breakthrough.

So until this project supports such services...Nothing to see here, please move along.

But this one do.
Wengo is a french telco affiliated to "neuf telecom", one of the leaders. It offers PC to regular phone and regular phone to pc for France residents. They also have very competitive international rates.
http://www.wengo.fr/ [wengo.fr] (site in french).

Skype was soaring to popularity long before they introduced their "SkypeOut" functionality. Skype's real innovation was their NAT hole punching which meant that you didn't have to worry about fiddling with your firewall to get it to work, a major shortcoming of other VOIP apps.

This memo documents the methods used by the current peer-to-peer (P2P) applications to communicate in the presence of middleboxes such as firewalls and network address translators (NAT). In addition, the memo suggests guidelines to application designers and middlebox implementers on the measures they could take to enable immediate, wide deployment of P2P applications with or without requiring the use of special proxy, relay or midcom protocols.

Actually, it's not, and there's no evidence that this happens (ethereal can be pretty convincing). What the "p2p" refers to is that connections are made directly between calling parties, without the intervention of other servers. True, it's not what people think of these days when you say p2p, but it's still entirely accurate.

Well have you had any luck using SkypeOut? For 3/4 of the calls I tried, the people on the phone couldn't hear me. Even when they did hear me, the quality of sound and the delay were just awful. I now have a big SkypeOut credit I'm probably never going to use (the usual PC to PC works fantastically well though).

The thing that interests me about Skype is that I think my parents have a shot at setting it up, something that doesn't seem very plausible with some of those other programs that require "just a few modifications to your firewall settings"... yeah right.

Skype is self contained and very easy to set up and use, and any open source competitor must match that.

I agree.I live currently in UK and all my family and firends are in Mexico. Before knowing skype I used phone cards to call them but I have found skype to be a blessing.

I have looked for other software to replace skype (just to see if there is any competition) but, the fares are almost the same. Unfortunately the calls to Mexico outside Mexico City are 0.080 EUR vs the 0.025 or 0.020 EUR for the standard skypeout call...

All the other services offer something similar. I know it is difficult have cheaper pric

This is an "alternative to Skype" in the same way that Google Talk is - it's an alternative if you happen to be running Windows 2000/XP. I have too much to do during the day to mess with running Windows, so it looks like I'm sticking with Skype or GizmoProject [gizmoproject.com]. No affiliation with either, aside from liking the fact that they work on more than one OS.

This is an "alternative to Skype" in the same way that Google Talk is - it's an alternative if you happen to be running Windows 2000/XP. I have too much to do during the day to mess with running Windows, so it looks like I'm sticking with Skype or GizmoProject. No affiliation with either, aside from liking the fact that they work on more than one OS.

Seems to be available to several platforms, or did I miss something?
License: GNU General Public License (GPL)
Operating System: MacOS X, Windows, Linux

Google extended the Jabber protocol to support voice in a jabber friendly way. They are preparing the spec for public release right now and I assume it'll be integrated with Gaim. Google paid several developers for Gaim over the "Summer of Code" and I believe they still have other resources dedicated to adding features to gaim. Regardless, if it is an open spec it will eventually be added to Gaim and Google's protocol will most likely support Speex according to their site.Regards,Steve

If anything, gaim-vv will add jabber/voice capability, which may eventually get merged into the mainstream gaim code along with their yahoo and msn webcam work. IMO the gaim people should first work on getting some of the simpler, useful features of jabber implemented, like service discovery and a presense system that's more advanced than anything AIM (and therefore gaim) currently supports. I think some of this is in the 2.0 version in cvs, but i haven't played with it that much. But I wouldn't go around "

Connecting to Google Talk is nice. Holding voice conversations with my contacts is both nice and necessary - if I just wanted text communication, I'd stick with IRC. Or ICQ. Or AIM. Or MSN. Or Yahoo!. Or any of the other countless instant messaging systems that have come and gone over the years.

As an added-value comment, I'll also note that everything Skype does is encrypted - EVERYTHING. That's a plus. Is Google Talk encrypting passwords yet? iChat doesn't think so when I connect with it...

What is the big deal? It's neat to be able to do this sort of thing, but it's, what, ten years ahead of its time?Desktop OS's aren't reliable enough yet, and get slowed down at the weirdest times, which means that this is going to be unreliable, too. Please give me a cheap-to-deploy, POTS-enabled (yet still cheap) system that a monkey (i.e. the person at the front desk) can administer. It needs to be able to interface with HR so that when a new person comes on board the system is automatically updated, and when a person leaves their stuff is forwarded to their manager and their account is blocked.THAT would be great. The rest of this stuff is just a lot of technology for WebEx to deploy to reduce their development costs.

in fact asterisk@home can be administered by a monkey. espically if you compare it to any professional phone system.

oh, with a bit of perl scripting the phone system can be automated and interfaced to HR databases. something that is 100% impossible with any AT&T, siemens, Cisco, NEC or other phone system made and sold.

Actually I'm running XP Pro, but I still have issues DAILY, everything from the machine slowing to a crawl, to having to reboot because something horrible goes wrong.But that raises an interesting point - if you have to have the most current and recent version of an OS to be able to use an application that, to be useful, requires very close to 100% uptime, then the app. becomes much less useful, since most of the machines out there aren't running the most recent (and patched) version of any OS.

For most people, Asterisk is not easy to use. Several companies are offering setups that are very easy to use. See http://www.coneenterprises.com/phone_solutions.php [coneenterprises.com] and http://fonality.com/ [fonality.com] for and interesting solution based on Asterisk. The interface rivals Vonage which is great for VoIP. The next generation of the software will allow database calls based on caller id so you can launch outlook or another database and pull up information based on the caller id. This system can add users and extentions ea

Well, as far as VOIP is I'm very glad with voipbuster [voipbuster.com], it lets me call for free most of the landlines in europe and also in USA.
It's not an opensource solution, but after all the really important thing is what can a regular guy get out technology, opensource or not. If voipbuster let me call for free most of my friends in europe I for one salute our new voip ruler, opensource or not.

I just installed voipbuster and tried it out. Cool. Any idea how they can offer free international calls? Is there some sneaky marketing / advertising going on? I dont believe in getting something for nothing....

Not sure how they do it, but in the last week, the credit has gone from 1 euro to 5.

One of my coworkers sent an email round last Tuesday (30th) with a Voipbuster link and the fact you only had to load 1 euro credit on it (on this page [voipbuster.com]). Now, the credit's up to 5 euros. Is this to reward early adopters or is it a sign of things to come? I agree, its very cool, but sustainable?

While writing this reply, I've made my way to this page [voipbuster.com] which still quotes the 1 euro charge, how very odd...

Great news: As from today, VoipBuster is available again for all Beta testers! And on top of that we have added some popular destinations to our list of free countries as well.

BUT: To counter the misuse of our network and to reserve capacity for our genuine testers, we have limited our Free-Calls policy to 1 minute per call. If you want to enjoy UNLIMITED free calls, just register and buy 5 [euros] worth of credit.

i think we are starting to see too many VoIP solutions...we dont know lots of competition, we need interoperatibility between them.Google said its trying to achieve that with Talk, I hope the rest goes the same way...

This is far more interoperable. It's SIP, which is, quite simply, the standard. Skype avoided it because it has problems with nat/firewalls, and that may be why google avoids it (I haven't been looking at their client), but this client will interoperate with anything else.

I realize he's joking, but he actually makes a good point. Joe User doesn't care how the software is developed, he only cares that it does the job. Plus, the word "open" will cause some to think that their personal communications will be open for others to intercept.

the promises it makes look really nice (as opposed to the current user interface, i hope they fix that), but does it a promise a single feature that gizmo [gizmoproject.com] doesn't already have? (i mean, modulo linux support; gizmo project promise to add that soon.)

The plugin does work quite well actually -- at least the stuff they've created so far. I'm actually concerned about the integration of the Phone Gaim code with the core Gaim code. I've never seen any mention of them working on that kind of functionality at all.

Seems the SIP phone and landline phone tie-in may be a revenue stream for the major distros. I'd rather give my money to Fedora for my long distance phone calls than to Skype, but that's what I do now...

The Gaim developers don't talk about it because the Linspire guys have only released the "source" in completely unusable form and refuse to answer simple questions about it. Plus, they didn't make it a plugin that normal users could install, they forked the code and hacked it together. They're trying to weasel the GPL, as they usually do.

What's more, it's based on an ancient fork of Gaim, so the developers naturally don't have time to waste on it. It'd be great if the Gaim folks added some softphone capabilities, but they'll likely do it starting from the modern codebase. Or someone else will write a plugin.

Last but not least, the people who created and then later abandoned phonegaim did so because they turned their efforts to creating the closed-source, proprietary replacement for it: Gizmo [gizmoproject.com].

This they have no intention of putting under an open-source license either. They like to use the word "open" as much as possible on their web site to confuse people into thinking they're open source, but they're not. Frankly the more I learn about Linspire, the less I like them, for just such actions as these. Give your money to a company that supports free software.

This they have no intention of putting under an open-source license either. They like to use the word "open" as much as possible on their web site to confuse people into thinking they're open source, but they're not. Frankly the more I learn about Linspire, the less I like them, for just such actions as these. Give your money to a company that supports free software.

Have they claimed to be Open Source? I thought they were Open Standards?

It will feature:- a redesigned GUI- a WIN32 port (hopefully)- support for the H.323 protocol- support for the SIP protocol (ie compatibility with many windowssoftphones including Windows Messenger, XTEN, SJPhone, compatibility with Asterisk, SER,...),with video support- a Voice over IP platform for GNOME users sponsored by OVH.com:
* all users will be world reachable usin

One problem with GNOMEmeeting is that its decentralized design makes it harder to set up and use than Skype for non-technical users in common network configurations. Being behind a NAT (which a lot of users are) makes GNOMEmeeting more difficult to configure. Skype works right out of the box, even behind a NAT, but Skype is more of a risk because if the central Skype server is unreachable for any reason, the simplicity of the client vanishes too. A central call routing server also makes it easier for thi

Of course it looks promising at this stage. When a product isn't completed it is always presented as the perfect solution.
This is classic with salesmen. "Will your product do such and such?"
And of course Mr. Salesman says yes in order to close the deal.
I understand this is opensource but the concept is the same. For the project to get attention it's presented as the open source skype alternative.
Let's just see it materialize, let's see it's capacities, limitations. Only then we will be able to claim

Yeah its great that more and more companies are coming out with Softphones that use SIP to talk to THEIR networks. Then why can't anybody make a damned good softphone that will talk to ANY SIP or IAX network? The biggest problem for mobile users who are using softphones to talk through a remote VOIP PBX is that it only works on about 60% of the networks. If someone would code a GOOD softphone for SIP and/or IAX, so our softphones worked on 90%+ networks, it would be worth paying for.

It's called OpenBlah, it has many features: HDTV streaming, 96Khz/24 sampling lossless encoding at 120:1 compression ratio, peer-to-peer real-time updates without restarting and an undelrying small-talk based OS with a korn shell! It's still under heavy developement (they just hit the planning milestone) but surely will it kick evil, closed-format Skype's ass like there's no tomorrow.

Lets get down to business. I call my testers in India almost everyday. In the past we have tried VoIP based products from MediaRing to Skype, but everything is a big hype.
The price to call India-Bangalore is 19.6C/Min(including VAT) on skype.com. While another Indian Telecom carrier, RelianceIndiaCall.com offers at 12.9C/Min. Additionally I get to call from my phone or cell phone and not stuck with PC.
I'll tell you from my first hand experience unless the rates are going to fall drastically, not many p

Try Sunrocket VoIP phone that lets you call to India - Bangalore for $.12. For only $199 annual you get all-you-can-eat USA/Canada unlimited calls with monthly credit of $3 USD on international calls.The Sunrocket is the "Google" of the VoIP (IMO). With this service you can simply hookup their gizmo overseas with USA area codes phone numbers, which will ring in India or anywhere else... and you'll simply call "home" number from USA.

The gizmo (VoIP Gateway) will run on any ethernet as long as you have soli

There are already open source telephony applications: ohphone and GnomeMeeting.

The real problem is that VoIP-to-POTS gateways are proprietary right now; they should become commoditized, so that you can combine whatever client software you like with whatever POTS gateway you want to subscribe to.

FreeWorldDialup [freeworlddialup.com] already has a free service that supports all sorts of existing standards. If you want to use a difficult to set-up SIP phone you can, but they also have an, apparently, brain-dead-easy Pulver Communicator [pulver.com] for those who don't want to deal with the hassles. They also have a small set of pre-configured SIP phones and even sell pre-configured hard phones. The only thing they don't have is a huge marketing push to skype... err.. hype this service.

1. Code compile with gcc does NOT automatically fall under the GPL (read up on the differences between GPL and LGPL).

2. You don't have to use GCC to compile your project. (There are also commmercial compilers for C++, for example Intel has one.). Your Windows re-write of the project seems like a big waste just because your lawyers don't have a clue.

3. You don't have to open-source ALL your code, only the changes to the core Linux operating system. Surely you could have split your system into an applicat

Besides being trolled, point 1 is factually incorrect. The use of GPL or LGPL doesn't matter in the case of GCC, because the output of GPLed programs is not covered by the GPL. Only if your code links to GCC or some other (L)GPL package will the GPL be invoked. Here's the relevant section of the GPL:

The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program).

But surely, Windows is out of the question as well, since your code that runs on windows must surely fall under MS copyright. At least with the GPL, you can sell your binaries, even if you have to give away the source.

This must be why [Free|Net|Open]BSD is so popular -- the liberal license allows you to both sell your code and keep it private. Just don't accidentally confuse a linux box with a BSD box, or else you'll have to GPL the

Although we had planned for no one outside of this company to ever
use, let alone see the source code, we were now put in a difficult
position. We could either give away our hard work, or come up with
another solution.

From the FAQ found here [gnu.org] you should be able to see that if you were not intending to distribute the program, then you wouldn't have to make the source code available to anyone. In fact you only have to make the source available to people you distribute the program to. It sounds like you n

OH PLEASE! The guy who wrote Speach Freely took it offline BECAUSE of national security. He knew that his program cold be used by terror cells and is even publically quoted as having regretted ever inventing cryptography in the first place. I think your real problem is that you don't like the fact that newer is always better and Skype is certainly newer. It's doing really well in grabbing mindshare and there is nothing that anyone can do about it. Face it, the days of free phonecalls are here to stay.

It's not difficult to come up with more mature technologies that have gone by the wayside, indeed, in many ways we've gone backwards. I recall CUSeeMe clients being available for the Commodore Amiga. About the only major complaint anyone had with them was that they required the attrocious and bloated "MUI" user interface system installed. That was in the mid-nineties.

Now we've progressed so far we're standardized upon an entirely new and unnecessary protocol that doesn't even work transparently through, e

And to make matters worse, they are extending this functionality to the average luser. Can you imagine an internet flooded with teenaged girls exchanging "he said/she said" stories, grannies exchanging recipes and terrorists making planned meetings without any traceability whatsoever? It's a nightmare. At least there was some security with SpeakFreely since it was so hard to use. But this Skype thing just scares the piss out of me. You technology folks really need to get a grasp on reality.